When All the Girls Have Gone

When Charlotte Sawyer is unable to contact her stepsister, Jocelyn, to tell her that one of her closest friends was found dead, she discovers that Jocelyn has vanished. Beautiful, brilliant and reckless Jocelyn has gone off the grid before, but never like this. In a desperate effort to find her, Charlotte joins forces with Max Cutler, a struggling PI who recently moved to Seattle after his previous career as a criminal profiler went down in flames literally. Burned out, divorced and almost broke, Max needs the job. After surviving a near-fatal attack, Charlotte and Max turn to Jocelyn's closest friends, women in a Seattle-based online investment club, for answers. But what they find is chilling. When her uneasy alliance with Max turns into a full-blown affair, Charlotte has no choice but to trust him with her life. For the shadows of Jocelyn's past are threatening to consume her and anyone else who gets in their way

Charlotte Sawyer finds out that her sister's best friend has been murdered. She contacts Max Cutler, a PI, and asks for his help. Her sister, Jocelyn, is supposed to be on a retreat, but Charlotte finds out that she has left the retreat. Now others, who are friends of Jocelyn, are being murdered and Charlotte is desperately trying to find her sister. Max and Charlotte join together to try to find Jocelyn before she is killed. This was a very good book from beginning to end.

This book did not have the feel of a JAK book. The murderer was introduced too early in the book and left little suspense. The characters were weakly written and difficult to understand in any personal sense. There were some major questions unanswered (why did Roxanne marry Egan Briggs?). This book seems to be an intro to two books to follow on the other foster brothers. I have found that many of my favorite authors are so over committed to publish that they do an outline and someone else fills in the story.

Whenever you read a Jayne Ann Krentz novel you know exactly what you're going to get. A spunky heroine, a somewhat terse, yet sweet hero, a mystery, and a happy ending. It's an easy, fun read with the usual JAK writing style and quirky conversational ticks.

Charlotte is our regular JAK heroine - she thinks she's uninteresting and boring and her fiancé left her a week before the wedding (and left her with all the bills!). Our hero is Max, a down on his luck PI, who had to leave a high-powered career as a profiler in D.C. due to a case that went awry. Both of our intrepid main characters call themselves "a one foot in front of the other" kind of person. They both seem to think this isn't a good character trait. But of course, we readers know better.

Max is hired to look into a suspicious death, and Charlotte stumbles across him while her stepsister is away. Soon, they're dodging bullets, researching a decades old crime, and generally getting to know each other.

The mystery was fairly involved, although not too in-depth. A few people died, but nothing graphic or too violent. There were quite a few potential bad-guys in this one, and I will admit it did keep me guessing until the end. Like all JAK's this this isn't a suspenseful romance, it's a romantic suspense :)

I'm wondering if this will be book one of a series, and the other two will be about Cabot and Jack, Max's foster brothers. A fast read - good for a vacation, flight, or a beach - with a sweet romance, a good mystery and a satisfying conclusion.